DdCno1
@DdCno1@beehaw.org
- Comment on Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of September 1 1 day ago:
FTL: Faster Than Light is consuming any moment of free time I have right now, this time with the Multiverse mod. The base game is already quite challenging, the Captain’s Edition Mod I was playing the last time around is several times harder, but this is once again even more demanding on the player.
The amount of variety and quality of the ships is immense, with some of them being so different from what is the norm in the game that they almost feel like games of their own. Unlocking a new ship is an occasion and you never know what you’re getting into. This inevitably leads to the game being unbalanced though, but I feel like this is intentional; certain ships are definitely designed to be especially challenging. Similarly, there are new items that can totally transform existing ships.
Even after dozens and dozens of hours with this mod, it’s constantly throwing new curveballs at me in the form of radically new encounters and insane story ideas. While the writing is often more than overly wordy and self-indulgent (it takes one to know one), there is a wicked sense of humor underneath, even if it can be crude at times. It could do with an editor or ten reigning in the writers though.
Still, I can’t recommend it enough to veteran players of the game looking for an actual challenge after having learned to blaze through the base game and less difficult mods - although chances are, if you’re a veteran FTL captain, you’ve likely already played this mod anyway. I’m just late to the party.
- Comment on Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of September 1 1 day ago:
It’s a good game. Definitely overly hated among outrage-hungry “gamers”. Lovely worldbuilding, excellent quests and random encounters, fun combat. Looks great too apart from characters and facial animations. It’s cozy sci-fi, quite different from the usual cynicism and darkness that is so overwhelming now in gaming.
- Comment on Microsoft Paint and Photos Embed Server-Issued GUIDs as Invisible Watermarks in Locally-Generated Images 3 days ago:
There is no widespread migration of desktop users from Windows to Linux and I doubt there ever will be. Can we finally bury this delusional idea? It’s far more likely that the desktop PC dies almost completely as a device category used by anyone but professionals and a tiny minority of enthusiasts than for this to happen.
- Comment on AI agents meant to replace Meta workers made “large-scale, disruptive actions” 5 days ago:
AI is more like 50% right on a good day though. The user was obviously speaking in hypotheticals.
- Comment on Sony Reminds PS Users They Don't Own Digital Games 1 week ago:
Except for the recent Nazi email affair, which immediately makes them not awesome.
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
I’ve worked for an org where Firefox with uBlock Origin were standard for everyone. They knew what they were doing.
- Comment on Meta Caught Paying Nazis to Post on Facebook 3 weeks ago:
The disadvantage is that this is the first time I’ve heard of Friendica (and I usually hear about these kinds of things much earlier).
- Comment on A missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months 5 weeks ago:
Is that a thing in Canada?
- Comment on Five tech giants are hiding $1.65tn in AI debt, using the trick that toppled Enron 1 month ago:
You can talk to me directly instead of behind my back, you know?
I’m not ignoring the international division of labor. Every country is part of it and every country has been part of it in the past, including Socialist ones.
- Comment on Five tech giants are hiding $1.65tn in AI debt, using the trick that toppled Enron 1 month ago:
I have a hunch you took this personally. Nah, I must be hallucinating.
socialists are even worse than capitalist
Their historic record is considerably worse. I don’t even need to bring up gulags, mass starvation and the abysmal living and human rights conditions of every Socialist regime throughout history to support this point (but it doesn’t hurt).
This does not mean that pure capitalism is fine either (I used to consider myself a smug and enlightened centrist - can you tell?), but it tends to work the best with a fair bit of socialism injected in key areas (social safety net, high taxes on wealth, strong regulations and institutions, robust democratic decision making, lots of economic freedom and high social mobility), as in the Nordic model, which is arguably the best thing humans have come up with so far.
extremely inefficient chip production collapsed Soviet Union economy
I didn’t say that, but it was definitely a strongly contributing factor. I mentioned East Germany in particular, since it spent a fortune on setting up a competitive chip industry to achieve parity with Western and Japanese companies, but failed. The debacle that was their infamous 1 MBit chip, which cost 1 Billion Ostmark to develop (at a time when the country was struggling with high debts it owed to West Germany), but never achieved more than 20% yields in pre-production and was never production-ready illustrates just how hopeless the endeavor was. By the time the chip was in said pre-production state, Japan was already producing 4 MBit chips en masse, at economic yields, of course. I can’t find the numbers on how much of the state budget went into this, but it was a considerable portion, at the cost of everything else. Literally their hail Mary.
Ironically, these investments did pay off in the long run, just not for them: The area where the East German government concentrated its chip production is now known as the German silicon valley. Investments into education and research in particular laid the groundwork for the current and very competitive market-driven chip industry and other IT companies that have settled there.
current-day tech giants as desperate today in attempt to save “their economic system” as Soviet Union and East Germany were in '70s and '80s?
No. Current-day tech giants are in search of something that promises them more perpetual growth in a finite world, where almost all viable technological niches are already saturated. Smartphones are a solved issue: Everyone has settled on glass rectangles with high-res touchscreens, the hardware and software for them is so mature that even ten year old devices are still sufficient today. Gimmicks like foldables are expected to remain fringe. Same with conventional PCs and laptops: Times when a device was obsolete after four years or sooner are long over. Cloud services and virtualization have similarly reached their peak, to the point that there’s a counter movement back towards local IT.
All of this means that easy avenues for more growth are already clogged up, so after some brief excursions into crypto and NFT, earlier and much smaller bubbles, it’s AI with its promise to replace costly human white collar labor with cheaper software that doesn’t talk back, doesn’t form unions or have uppity ideas about redistributing wealth or getting rid of greedy CEOs. Digital slaves, if you will, ideally as intelligent or more intelligent than humans, but without any ability to shape its own destiny. It’s not happening, of course, just as delusional as trying to automate yourself out of the inherent issues of centrally planned economies, but everyone needs to pretend that it might one day, because their livelihoods depend on it. They have invested too much, are in too deep to pull out, are afraid that if one of them does, the house of cards comes crashing down.
I will not pretend that any of this is particularly insightful, but since you appeared to have struggled with the historic parallels, I thought I’d elaborate on each point a little. I hope this doesn’t cause you any additional pain, but if it does, you should be able to deal with it as a strong, rugged Socialist individual used to hardships in service of a better future. No pain, no glorious workers’ and peasants’ revolution, am I right?
- Comment on Five tech giants are hiding $1.65tn in AI debt, using the trick that toppled Enron 1 month ago:
How does a defensive alliance restrict economic systems?
- Comment on Five tech giants are hiding $1.65tn in AI debt, using the trick that toppled Enron 1 month ago:
Given your username and where it’s registered, you will not like the answer, but: Socialists were also notorious for cooking the books to hide their failures, even more so than dirty capitalist pigs. It’s one of the reasons why the system failed.
This doesn’t make the AI bubble okay, of course. I’m only writing this, because your smug comment combined with your user name are particularly ironic.
Another thing: Had LLMs like we have them now been available in the '70s and '80s, the likes of East Germany and the Soviet Union would have been all over them in a desperate bid to save their economic system, just like they tried to with computerized planning and automation back then, wasting ridiculous and economically ruinous amounts of resources on extremely inefficient chip production before they collapsed. In a way, current-day tech giants and the corporate world in general are repeating this mistake in a desperate bid to tasks part in the “next big thing” to get out of the stagnation they found themselves in.
Call it history repeating itself or rhyming - either way, I’m noticing some patterns here.
- Comment on Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered an in-person final; scores fell 50% 1 month ago:
There was also a background check involved, which I forgot to mention. But overall, it’s very much the former and not even close to something like the latter.
- Comment on Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered an in-person final; scores fell 50% 1 month ago:
Not even that these days. The good jobs are for people with connections. Those who made it through based on merit are more likely to end up as office drones that can be let go if the CEO wants a higher quarterly bonus to spend on gold trim for his third yacht.
- Comment on Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered an in-person final; scores fell 50% 1 month ago:
I was hired during the pandemic and it was quite an interesting experience to get there. They had an online assessment center, several hours (with breaks) of all sorts of quizzes, questions and tasks, mostly intelligence and memory-related, combined with math, general knowledge, language proficiency and a section on personality and personal preferences, with a relatively limited focus on IT questions at the end that felt tacked on for the job. There was no surveillance during it - no webcam requirements or anything. They just sent me a link and I could complete this timed test at a point in time of my choosing, in one go. Since it wasn’t very difficult at all and there was more than enough time, I had no issues with this one.
Before the interview, I was handed a 20 minute condensed version of largely the same type of questions to be completed in person (very small room, alone, under supervision, to eliminate any possibility of cheating), which I completed in no time, and finally an extensive interview (IIRC about 45 minutes) in front of what I can only describe as a tribunal of eight more or less relevant people sitting in a half-circle in front of a chair for the interviewee (at a distance due to COVID), most of which would just silently judge me with their eyes and take down notes as two to three of them switched between interrogating, I mean, interviewing me. They were actually very friendly, but it did feel quite intense. I was extremely nervous in the beginning, even stuttered a little, but as the interview went on, my nerves calmed down. None of the questions were surprising nor upsetting, but due to my initial nervousness, I still felt like I had failed.
Anyway, after they had hired me (I received a call about two weeks later), they later told me that they had done this twice with about 100 applicants each, just to hire a single person. In retrospect, I can’t believe I successfully made it through all of this. I was very well prepared for the interview and had previously spent a lot of effort (several weeks worth) on the application itself, tailoring it to the job and the organization, but still.
If you have the amount of resources this large org has, I think this is a very thorough way of doing things. The simple method of repeating a portion of the test in person (with different questions, but the same kind as online) eliminates cheaters and can be done by an org of virtually any size. The lengthy interview in front of a diverse group I’m not so sure about though. With shy and nervous applicants (as well as those on the spectrum), this can be very overwhelming, but since they all have to find a consensus in the end, discrimination and personal preferences influencing the hiring decision are less likely to happen.
- Comment on The incredible shrinking Xbox: Five studios, 3,200 employees let go 1 month ago:
There are multiple reports stating that id software has been hit the hardest, with almost all of their programmers (and many artists) having been laid off.
pushsquare.com/…/legendary-dev-id-software-allege…
It looks like Xbox management doesn’t see the point in id having their own engine anymore, which certainly is a decision.
I’m not sure what to think of future id games being based on Unreal (like Halo and everything else), which is the logical conclusion to this. So much of the studio’s identity is tied to their proprietary engines, which have always been industry-leading.
- Comment on Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Xbox: ‘We have to turn this into a sustainable business’ 2 months ago:
Sure, I don’t think the Xbox 5 will be a success, but it’s highly likely it’ll still ship far more units than the Gabecube, simply because Microsoft is able to shift more units as a larger organization with more presence everywhere (including in the retail space and online stores other than their own).
The difference is that for an organization the size and bloat of Microsoft, numbers that would make Gabe happy would be disastrous for them.
No consumer actually cares about minute differences in performance (or other aspects) between different operating systems and platforms. People buy the platform that has the games and meaningful features they seek, like for example portability, Nintendo’s second-strongest pull after their IPs. Microsoft is hastily trying to claw back their exclusives after a disastrous abandonment of this strategy, which sent margins down the drain. Yes, this will mean that they’ll continue serving the PC, so you can play most of their games on Valve’s devices or any other gaming PC as well, but once more: Normal people buy what’s on the front page on Amazon or on the most illuminated shelf at their local store.
The overwhelming majority don’t even configure their task bar, for crying out loud. Seeing an unmodified one with the big useless search box, spam widget, applications they are never using is one of the quickest reliable indicators that someone is not a tech person.
- Comment on Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Xbox: ‘We have to turn this into a sustainable business’ 2 months ago:
Look at sales of the Steam Deck compared to consoles and your prediction falls flat on its face. Sure, it would be nice in theory, but both the Deck and the Gabecube are very niche devices.
- Comment on Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Xbox: ‘We have to turn this into a sustainable business’ 2 months ago:
It was kind of neat in the beginning, at least in theory - and not just from a consumer perspective: Indies in particular benefited from it, since it raised awareness on their titles in addition to the big bucks from Microsoft coming in:
- Comment on Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Xbox: ‘We have to turn this into a sustainable business’ 2 months ago:
Based on everything I’ve read, Redfall was pretty much entirely on Arkane, just like, at EA, Anthem was on Bioware’s internal leadership, not publisher meddling. On the contrary, more publisher meddling would have likely made these disasters less likely.
- Comment on Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Xbox: ‘We have to turn this into a sustainable business’ 2 months ago:
Eh, both the Steam Deck and the Gabecube are far too niche and unknown for that. I’ve used the Steam Deck on public transportation and pretty much everyone assumed that it was a Nintendo Switch at first - and I had to go to great length to explain what it was.
One notable exception (out of a small handful) was a mother who recognized it as something different and asked me a ton of questions about it, because she wanted to reward her studious son (who sat next to us wide-eyed, with increasing levels of giddiness) for his great marks with it.
- Comment on Analysts Say Video Game Hardware Isn't Getting Cheaper Anytime Soon 2 months ago:
The number of people doing this is so infinitesimally small that even within the most enthusiast circles, it’s practically unheard of. It’s a footnote of a footnote, at best.
- Comment on GOG apologizes for emailing Nazi runes to its followers 2 months ago:
The S rune is not the only issue. By combination of runes, I meant the whole thing. All of these runes have been used by Nazis and extensively so. While the rune used by the SS is the most well known, this is like a best-of of which runes Heinrich Himmler and modern Nazis are especially fond of.
- Comment on GOG apologizes for emailing Nazi runes to its followers 2 months ago:
Holy hell, this does not look like an accident. This combination of runes does not just happen. Whoever did this at the company thought they could get away with it.
- Comment on Searching for 'Disregard' Breaks Google AI overviews; Similar command phrases, including "ignore," "quit," "skip," and "stop,"; "look" and "forget" are also prompting chatbot-like responses. 3 months ago:
Google claims they do. During their last presentation, they boasted about billions of users of their AI. The sheer gall of these people!
- Comment on SHL0MS(famous prankster on X/Twitter) baited AI haters by posting a real painting by Monet, claiming it was AI generated. The post got viral(>6M views) as art critics started deleting their replies 3 months ago:
The vast majority of people are unaware of the existence of such tools.
- Comment on A million baby monitors and security cameras were easily viewable by hackers 3 months ago:
About 16, 17 years ago, I was briefly obsessed with browsing freely accessible webcams on the Internet. Most were surveillance cameras outside of businesses (some even with motorized controls!) and it was fun to explore the world that way: I saw sunrises in the Arctic Circle, busy Asian city streets, lots of interesting everyday moments from around the globe. Just harmless fun, right?
However, two cameras I stumbled upon made me stop this entirely: One was from an office in Russia, a hidden camera placed under a desk shared by several young women wearing short skirts. The other (thus the connection to the title) was a camera inside someone’s home, right above a baby sleeping in their crib. In fact, the entire house, every single room, was covered in cameras, all of them accessible to the world. I felt like the worst creep, even though I found both completely by accident.
- Comment on OpenAI shelves Stargate UK in blow to Britain’s AI ambitions 4 months ago:
Maybe they should ask their AI for ideas on how to make money.
By the way: Why are AI companies still on a hiring spree while at the same time peddling AI as a replacement of high-skill white collar jobs, like software engineering?
- Comment on Linux kernel maintainers are following through on removing Intel 486 support 4 months ago:
Sometimes, the issue is certification, e.g. for aerospace and medical applications - although these systems tend to run on decades-old software anyway (since changes to the software also need to be certified, which rarely happens), so it’s not like this has an actual impact.
- Comment on Men Are Buying Hacking Tools to Use Against Their Wives and Friends 4 months ago:
Decreasing friction is a problem though. In the past, you needed at least some basic skills to e.g. photoshop a compromising photo of someone (and quite a lot of experience to do so convincingly), whereas current AI tools can do this far better with no skills required.